That is *exactly* the problem - you might be able to fit thousands of txs into a block down the track - but they are still not confirmed until they are confirmed are they?

Sure - I know where you are headed with the idea - but *still* we can end up with "forks in different countries" as I don't believe you can be sure to achieve what I have put in bold.

I have not heard anything about this but basically I think such "special" addresses would have to be under the control of a 3rd party (that the vendor will have to decide to "trust" not to attempt anything nefarious).

Note the "special" here - I am guessing this is probably something like the "green addresses" of Mt. Gox.

Basically you are once again trading "decentralisation" for "convenience" (I don't doubt the appeal though).

It is though a very *correct* way of looking at it - as a retailer you always have to "take a risk" about your shop security vs. convenience and "atmosphere" (no-one would be very comfortable with a shop that demanded to "strip search you" before leaving).

Remember even *cash* can be fake (something I know well about here as I have unfortunately ended up receiving a couple of fake notes over the years despite the fact I do normally check them).

That would require some "study" of *actual* network latency (versus a few ad hoc examples) to determine for sure - but I think you can see we are going to struggle to get anything close to *instant* confirmations "in the real world".

The suggestion I was making (and it is only a suggestion) would be that both the single account and one owning "leased addresses" are limited to a max. amount of forging power (say 1% for convenience).

So any additional forging power by the way of extra NXT or extra leased accounts would be "useless" and therefore most likely to be allocated elsewhere (*manually* with my suggestion rather than somehow *automatically* via the *penalty* concept).

If he has a suitable AT then he might not need a friend.

How are you going to "make sure" of this?

Are you going to "beat" the GCF?

If so please let me know the "secret sauce".

No - you can have your balance emptied by a *faster* tx (if you know how to achieve that) so that your tx at the supermarket will simply fail due to zero balance.

Not if the balance of said account has become *zero* in the meantime due to the supermarket not having fast enough internet to see the other tx that was sent by "tricky Joe" at the same time he bought the soda from another location (which emptied his balance via a higher speed route) as he had set that up perhaps via a VPS or some other way (as I said "average Joe" would be very unlikely to be able to get away with this).

Again - I think CfB and I are "in tune" with this.

You can't improve your own latency issues by having "some other servers" talk faster to each other.

At the end of the day your "slow connection" simply "can't keep up" so it won't be able to see those fast flying confirmations and more than likely will end up on a fork.

It only helps the "hallmarked nodes" in "talking to each other" - it doesn't change the time it takes your own node (if you are a retailer for example) to talk to them.

So sure you could have those nodes probably do things much faster "between themselves" but still the "outsider" can't catch up.

Put it this way: 1 x 1 minute confirmation takes 1 minute and 6 x 10 second confirmations takes 1 minute.

Both are most likely about the same level of security.

It doesn't *change* the *latency* to have more nodes.

The latency is due to the physical hardware of the internet itself and some of the software (in particular things like the GCF) that sit at the fairly low levels above that.

Adding "more hops" can actually only make things *slower*.

That's where we have to work out "trade offs".

IMO having lots of forks is not a great idea (a fork of > 2 rarely happens in Bitcoin).

Remember the "average Joe" going into a 7-11 to purchase a "can of soda" probably isn't even "capable" of trying to do a "double spend" so is it any more likely to occur than if they "slipped the soda can into their pocket"?

Unfortunately there is no "easy answer" - basically retailers will still have to take "risks" on blockchain confirmations the same as they do when accepting credit cards (that could be stolen) or even cash (that could be fake).

Things like "green addresses" are a another possibility but once again end up being "centralised" ideas.

Personally I think the 1000+ TPS "hype" is pretty much just that (if we are talking about properly "secured" txs).

Exactly what I was trying to explain (perhaps you'll accept it when it comes from CfB rather than me).

This is exactly the problem that so many of the "alts" have - they think that you can just reduce the confirmation time and everything is fine.

I am not insulting you (sorry if you were offended) but you in fact have only posted your opinions (things like the "ping" time I posted is a *fact* at least at the time that I checked which was actually *while* I was writing my reply).

I know you are very keen to be able to have Nxt "sing and dance" but I don't make the rules about how the internet works or how the GCF works or many other such things.

I do know that the reason why many silly alt clones with fast confirmation times have big fork problems though which is what I've been talking about (they naively ignored things like "network latency" to try and promote their "fast confirmation times").

None taken (it sucks using internet here) but China will be the world's biggest economy within a few years.

So you can't really ignore it when you are considering anything economical at all.